far to disregard the
protest of Vallisneri, as to undertake the adaptation of every part of
his own system to the Mosaic account of the creation. On the third day,
he said, the globe was everywhere covered to the same depth by fresh
water; and when it pleased the Supreme Being that the dry land should
appear, volcanic explosions broke up the smooth and regular surface of
the earth composed of primary rocks. These rose in mountain masses above
the waves, and allowed melted metals and salts to ascend through
fissures. The sea gradually acquired its saltness from volcanic
exhalations, and, while it became more circumscribed in area, increased
in depth. Sand and ashes ejected by volcanoes were regularly disposed
along the bottom of the ocean, and formed the secondary strata, which in
their turn were lifted up by earthquakes. We need not follow this author
in tracing the progress of the creation of vegetables and animals on the
other days of creation; but, upon the whole, it may be remarked, that
few of the old cosmological theories had been conceived with so little
violation of known analogies.

_Generelli's illustrations of Moro_, 1749.--The style of Moro was
extremely prolix, and, like Hutton, who, at a later period, advanced
many of the same views, he stood in need of an illustrator. The Scotch
geologist was hardly more fortunate in the advocacy of Playfair, than
was Moro in numbering amongst his admirers Cirillo Generelli, who, nine
years afterwards, delivered at a sitting of Academicians at Cremona a
spirited exposition of his theory. This learned Carmelitan friar does
not pretend to have been an original observer, but he had studied
sufficiently to enable him to confirm the opinions of Moro by arguments
from other writers; and his selection of the doctrines then best
established is so judicious, that a brief abstract of them cannot fail
to be acceptable, as illustrating the state of geology in Europe, and in
Italy in particular, before the middle of the last century.

The bowels of the earth, says he, have carefully preserved the memorials
of past events, and this truth the marine productions so frequent in the
hills attest. From the reflections of Lazzaro Moro, we may assure
ourselves that these are the effects of earthquakes in past times, which
have changed vast spaces of sea into terra firma, and inhabited lands
into seas. In this, more than in any other department of physics, are
observations and experiments ind